President Obama's Approaching Middle East Visit, Speech Is Opportunity to Address Human Rights in Egypt

For Immediate Release

President Obama's Approaching Middle East Visit, Speech Is Opportunity to Address Human Rights in Egypt

Human Rights First Issues Blueprint for Promotion of Human Rights in Egypt

NEW YORK - Just days before President Barack Obama’s first official visit to
Egypt and his much-anticipated June 4 speech, Human Rights First (HRF)
is urging the administration to chart a new course in U.S. efforts to
promote human rights in Egypt.

In How to Promote Human Rights in Egypt, a new HRF
Blueprint issued today, the organization called on the Obama
Administration to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to
improve basic rights and freedoms for all Egyptians. The Blueprint
recommends a new strategy for human rights promotion, one that focuses
on making the Egyptian government a partner, and builds on commitments
and pledges made by the Egyptian government to improve human rights
conditions. This new approach should also situate U.S. human rights
promotion efforts firmly within the multilateral framework by which
Egypt is bound, rather than relying primarily on unilateral pressure
that Egypt has been able to evade in the past.

“The Bush Administration identified the right problem in seeking to
break from the failed and longstanding policies of ‘excusing and
accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East,’ but the task of
creating a new policy remains incomplete,” said Neil Hicks,
International Policy Advisor at HRF. “The Obama Administration must now
finish the job. What President Obama says and does while he is in Egypt
will be a key indicator of the importance the new administration will
accord to human rights promotion globally.”

Today’s Blueprint outlined several key recommendations that could
serve as the impetus for human rights reforms in Egypt, including:

The Obama Administration should publicly call on the Egyptian
government to hold a transparent and contested presidential election in
2011, a time that may well mark the end of President Mubarak’s 30 year
term in office, as a first step towards more competitive, inclusive
elections.

President Obama should meet publicly with representatives of
independent civil society organizations while he is in Egypt and voice
his support for human rights defenders who face harassment,
restrictions, baseless prosecutions and defamation in the officially
controlled media.

In an effort to strengthen democracy and improve human rights, the
Obama Administration should work with the Egyptian government to step
up programs designed to strengthen institutional checks and balances
within Egypt that protect against tyranny. These include efforts to
ensure the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, freedom of
the press, freedom of religion and belief, an autonomous civil society,
protection of vulnerable minority groups and gender equality.

The U.S. should urge repeal of Egypt’s near permanent state of
emergency and oppose efforts by the Egyptian government to retain
powers to restrict basic rights, such as freedom of expression and
assembly.

“U.S. policy must respond to the demands of people in Egypt and
throughout the region for more democracy and greater respect for human
rights. President Obama’s speech in Cairo is a perfect opportunity for
this administration to make clear that it stands with those throughout
the region who are working for a better future grounded in respect for
the rule of law and basic rights and freedoms,” Hicks concluded.

Human Rights First is a non-profit, nonpartisan international human rights organization based in New York and Washington D.C. Human Rights First believes that building respect for human rights and
the rule of law will help ensure the dignity to which every individual
is entitled and will stem tyranny, extremism, intolerance, and violence.

Further

In further proof U.S. cops are out of control - cue LAPD killing a homeless man - comes Cleveland's WTF response to a lawsuit by the family of Tamir Rice, shot dead in a park for playing with a toy gun. His death, says the city, was "directly and proximately caused by (his) failure to exercise due care to avoid injury.” To wit: He's to blame for his own murder because he didn't understand he was in the wrong body. The kind that gets shot - the black kind.